PaleoICE – ¿Es el periodo actual el más cálido de los últimos milenios? Evidencias desde el hielo glaciar de los Pirineos
The objective of this project is twofold. First, to date the oldest ice of the Monte Perdido Glacier and place that dating in a regional climatic context, in order to evaluate and compare the current climate warming with previous warm periods, like the Holocene thermal maximum, the Bølling–Allerød period, etc. Second, to explore the capacity of Pyrenees glacier ice to serve as a climate archive. The glacier ice contains dust, pollen, isotopes of oxygen and microorganisms that can be used to interpret the climate at the time the snowfall occurred and the ice formed. Through a multi-indicator study of glacier ice, we intend to reconstruct the past climate changes in the Pyrenees.
All this ice loss prompts the question whether the Monte Perdido Glacier might have experienced other periods of retreat in the past millennia, possibly even a complete disappearance. To answer this complicate question, the PaleoICE project aims to reconstruct the evolution of the glacier during last centuries or millennia through the drilling of ice cores. These are the first ice cores extracted from glaciers in the Iberian Peninsula.
The objective of the PaleoICE project is twofold. First, to date the oldest ice of the Monte Perdido Glacier and place that dating in a regional climatic context, in order to evaluate and compare the current climate warming with previous warm periods, like the Holocene thermal maximum, the Bølling–Allerød period, etc. Second, to explore the capacity of Pyrenees glacier ice to serve as a climate archive. The glacier ice contains dust, pollen, isotopes of oxygen and microorganisms that can be used to interpret the climate at the time the snowfall occurred and the ice formed. Through a multi-indicator study of glacier ice, we intend to reconstruct the past climate changes in the Pyrenees.
Start date: May 2017 End Date: April 2019 Programme: Proyectos Explora (MICIU)
Coordinator: Dr. Ana Moreno Caballud (Pyrenean Institute for Ecology, IPE-CSIC, Spain)
Partners in the consortium:
- IPE Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología
- BC3 Basque Centre for Climate Change
- IGME Instituto Geológico y Minero de España
- UAB Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
- UAM Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
- MCNM Museo de Ciencias Naturales en Madrid
- UPM Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
- CAB Centro de Astrobiología de Madrid
Key people involved in BC3: